Gents,
I am in the middle of rebuilding the front end of my car and an LS3 swap. The engine is out, entire suspension is ripped out, all bolts, nuts are out for zinc plating, new coil overs are purchased, and the engine bay has been repainted.
I took the opportunity of the engine bay and fender wells being empty to do some 3D scanning to finally get around to designing properly functional fender vents.

3D scans so far:





I will pull the scans into Solidworks and design something that I can 3D print as a test piece. If everything fits I will 3D print the molds and make everything in carbon fiber (done this process before for my front bumper vents....came out great):





Where I need your input and help:
I am not sure about the design, so far this is what I have. Admittedly it's inspired by the Mustang GTD and is meant to be super functional so my front splitter functions better. Splitter has expansion channels that are arguably too large for a car with no vented fenders.

Option 1:


Option 2 following the hip line:





This design also helps to evacuate as much as air possible from above the wheel and the front/middle part of the fender. It should also be possible to make it work with the rather tight area between the outside and inner fender. This area right here is tight:



Which means the channels can't be wide, they must have a large surface area. Unfortunately I can't have a beautiful WIDE design like what's possible in an S2000:




Just look at how much real estate there is in that fender. It's super wide allowing the vent to have less of a side profile because it makes up for the flow in terms of the breadth of the vent. We don't have that luxury in the G or Z platform because of how close the inner fender is to the outside fender cover.

I would love some input or ideas. If you guys want the original picture and sketch some concepts, it's below. Also I am happy to share the 3d scan STL file with anyone who wants to try a few designs.


Original pic for concept work:

 

GTD Mustang vs my fender design so far:

Option 1:

Option 2:



Option 3:

from a slightly different perspective:





Mustang GTD:






I could really use some suggestions

 

another idea, this time with vent angle going in the opposite direction. This would actually be easier to manufacture in carbon. Less vents and the angles would create less of a challenge around the curve of the fender top:

 

Personally I think they're too tall for how slim the front fenders are on these cars. Take inspiration from Porsche fenders, not a GTD.

 

I gave it a thought and made a few alternatives:

A:



B:


C:


D:


E:

 

B is better but I would go with a fish gill design, think parenthesis.

 

I had to switch to Autodesk Fusion and learn how to work with surfaces in this interface. Solidworks was just not cooperating with the large scan or my PC is not good enough. I think I have a rough idea on how to do this, but very new to Fusion. I did some work to sketch out the duct outlet. Generally speaking it seems like there will be enough surface area with this design to really get a nice amount of flow. I still have a lot of work to do, but I think I have a good start.

 

Did some more work on this. After doing a bit of modeling Im really starting to like the organic shape. That said, it's rather obvious that there is absolutely no way I could have done this without 3d scanning. This will be a rather intricate piece, but arguably shouldn't be difficult to make in carbon.
Also I need to 3d scan the front part of the side skirt and the old wheel well plastics. Without those pieces I don't know where to terminate the new vent or rather where it needs to connect to existing pieces.

So it looks like I need to pull out the scanner again before moving forward.

 

Interesting shape and design. I hope it works as intended. I enjoy following along.

 

made some more progress.
I did a really shitty 3d scan of the wheel well liner. Awful scan, but it allowed me to push a bit further with the design. I'm really starting to like the organic shape. A lot of it is determined purely by the shape of the wheel well and the space available.

 

A bit of progress, but seeing now I still have a long way to go. I'm trying to align the model with the clip holes now and it's a lot of pulling and adjusting. It'll be a while before I can start printing test pieces.

 

It's nice to see people working on new ideas for these cars again. Reminds me of the old days here on the forum.

I agree with above though. I like the design of the B option.

 

Agree, B is probably more "street friendly". I'll give this version a go first given my track use and if I can get it to work and fit, I'll poke around to see if anyone wants to have a B version made at cost of material+time.

Did manage to get some more work done on this. Looks like I need at least one more scan to get the front part done. I'm missing a scan of at least one mounting point on the fender rail. Unfortunately it's super cold here, so I'm not too keen on going outside and doing another scan. Anyways, here's a few progress pics: